A variety of knitting methods called a seamless knitting technique have been invented for knitwear knitted by using a flat knitting machine having at least a pair of front and back needle beds extending in a transverse direction, disposed opposite to each other in a cross direction, and being capable of being racked in the transverse direction so that loops can be transferred between the front and back needle beds. When the knitwear such as a sweater, for example, is knitted using the flat knitting machine described above, its body is knitted in the form of a tubular knitted fabric whose front body part and back body part are continuously joined at both ends thereof, starting at hem parts thereof toward shoulder parts thereof, while also its sleeves located at right and left sides of the body are also knitted in a tubular form, respectively, Then, the sleeves are joined to the body while being moved toward the body, and further the front body part and the back body part are joined together at the shoulder parts. This knitting method known as the seamless knitting technique can provide the result of eliminating or simplifying the post-process such as a sewing process after completion of the knitting.
This knitting technique is disclosed by Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 2, for example. FIG. 9 is a view showing a right half of a sweater 20 knitted by the method described by those Patent Documents, when viewed from the back body part side. FIG. 10-A shows a stitch structure of the back body part in an area of a joining line 23 of the shoulder part, and FIG. 10-B shows a view showing the knitting steps schematically. Shaded portions of FIG. 10-A indicate groups of stitches in the wale at the lateral end portion, and framed portions of the same figure indicate double stitches. Arrows in FIG. 10-B indicate loop transfer in which stitches of the front body are transferred to be overlapped with stitches of the back body. In FIG. 10-B, the groups of stitches in the wale at the lateral end portion are indicated by black circles, and the stitches held after the knitting for the narrowing stitch are depicted at the upper side. The Patent Documents cited above describes that the knitwear is made in the following processes. The body and the sleeves are respectively knitted in a tubular form, starting at hem parts thereof, and are united with each other at armhole parts thereof. Thereafter, every time that a proper number of courses are knitted, the sleeves are overlapped with the body to be joined to each other. This knitting proceeds up to the shoulder parts. When the knitting comes at the shoulder parts, the knitting of the front body part is stopped and the joining of the front body part and the back body part starts from the shoulder tip to the collar part sequentially while the shoulder part of the back body part is knitted in a trapezoid form. By knitting the shoulder part in the trapezoid form, a silhouette slanting downwardly from the collar part toward the shoulder tip is formed. The shoulder part is knitted by a so-called inside narrowing process that every time that the back body part is knitted by a predetermined number of courses, the stitches of the front body part at the lateral end portion thereof are overlapped with the stitches of the back body part at the lateral end portion thereof to be joined thereto, while at the same time, groups of front stitches comprising a predetermined number of wales of the back body part at the lateral end portion thereof are displaced so that the back body can be narrowed in knitting width. As a result of this, a fashion line 25 extending in parallel with the joining line is formed by the groups of stitches of the wales of the back body part at the lateral end portion.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei 09-273051
Patent Document 2: International Publication No. WO00-12799